Minxipedia

It's kind of ironic that last night I was literally round the corner from Soho having been to see Miranda Kane and her Coin Operated Girl show. A comedy performance of a former escort aiming to dispel some of the myths that sex workers are unhappy, forced, trafficked drug addicts *insert media stereotype of choice*. It's hilarious and brilliant by the way.

Completely unaware what was going on in Soho I went home to discover via Twitter that the police had been making raids on 25 flats of sex workers, three sex shops and two lap dancing clubs. This morning's media is awash with stories of crime, trafficking and forced prostitution. The angle is all about 'cleaning up' Soho and rescuing women. I am not naive enough to think that Soho is squeaky clean, I am pretty positive that there are criminal elements in Soho, however sex work is not one of them and the treatment of the women caught up in the raids is appalling and barbaric:

Slapping up eviction notices and throwing people out onto the street in the middle of a cold December night.

Confiscating cash (rightfully earned!) phones and property. So because it belongs to a prostitute it must be nicked? What better way to save someone than steal their money from them?

Arresting immigrant women on the pretext that they may be victims of trafficking, despite them SAYING they were not. Some have ended up at the Heathrow Detention Centre.

Inviting the media along for the ride to watch it and for the papers to publish photos of women hiding their faces. If that doesn't make it obvious they don't want to be photographed then what is? These pictures are salacious and dehumanising. Link here, if you want to see. Any fucking excuse for the Daily Mail to both express outrage and get in women wearing stockings onto their pages.

The media refer to the flats as squalid. No evidence of that in the photos. There are heaters, electric, presumably running water and the flats are clearly furnished and look clean. The cheapest flat I could find to but in Soho costs over £600,000 and it's costs about £1,500 a month to rent a small Soho. Hardly a deprived area.

The English collective of Prostitutes have said: “It is outrageous that the police are raiding premises where women are working together safely and collectively with friends. The police must know that some women will end up working on the street as a result, where it is much more dangerous. Most of the women thrown out of premises are mothers and grandmothers who have now lost their livelihood.”